Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Focus will be to expand National Tournament Series for Youth and Adult Soccer

For over 30 years the Richmond Strikers have been building a soccer tournament series that today brings about 50,000 people and over ten million dollars of economic impact and 15,000 hotel room reservations to the greater Richmond area every year. Their nationally ranked Jefferson CupTM soccer tournament is already widely recognized by youth soccer clubs, college coaches, and Nike Soccer as one of the penultimate tournaments for high performance soccer teams. The agreement announced today provides for an exclusive 10‐year tournament partnership between SportsQuest and Strikers, who now collectively own and operate the largest platform of soccer fields in the world as well as an operational team perfectly positioned to create similar nationally recognized tournaments for mid‐level youth travel teams, recreational youth teams, and adult teams.

“It was a natural fit and a genuine strategic opportunity to energize our already nationally recognized youth tournament series,” stated Scott Turner, Striker’s Executive Director, “SportsQuest’s expertise in family entertainment, sport development capabilities, and outstanding campus will enhance the services that we offer to families who travel to our soccer tournaments and provide us with enough synthetic turf fields to avoid having to cancel a tournament due to inclement weather. Our partnership will also dramatically increase club revenues used to fund our not‐for‐profit mission to provide high quality soccer programming to youth of all ages and abilities.”

“We were tremendously excited when Scott approached us with the proposal to partner with the Strikers on soccer tournaments,” remarked Steve Burton, SportsQuest CEO, “the Striker partnership provides our business model immediate credibility and is the first of many similar partnership announcements SportsQuest will be making over the next few months.” Turner and Burton reported that the leadership and governing Boards of both the Strikers and SportsQuest voted unanimously to approve the tournament partnership.

Dan Gecker, Chairman of Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors and a strong supporter of SportsQuest, stated, "we are delighted with the partnership between SportsQuest and Strikers to bring tournaments to the SportsQuest venue; it is consistent with our desire to promote sports tourism in Chesterfield County.” Gecker added, “we expect that this is the first of many announcements of top‐quality events coming to the SportsQuest site."

The agreement allows the Strikers and SportsQuest to combine their efforts to develop a platform of excellent soccer programming and family entertainment over a proposed annual series of five soccer tournaments that will ultimately bring over 100,000 people to the greater Richmond area during eight weekends each year.

Turner and Burton both emphasized that their existing agreement is focused singularly on tournaments and does not affect the Strikers current structure or programming, nor does it preclude SportsQuest from partnering with other local youth soccer clubs for league play and sport development programs. “We look forward to continued discussions with the Chesterfield youth soccer clubs,” stated Tim O’Sullivan, Executive Director of SportsQuest Soccer, “we are dedicated to delivering quality soccer at all levels.”